- Title: Siobhan Davies Commissions
- Summary: Drawing Series Sarah Warsop and Tracey Rowledge explored how choreographed movement and physical presence could be experienced through mark making. Words and text expressing physical states of being became a spring board for choreographed movement, which in turn became the catalyst for their graphite drawings. In this series of work the mark making and the body’s physical and emotional states are inseparable.
- Work: What Isn’t Here Hasn’t Happened
- Choreographer: Siobhan Davies
- Artist: Sarah Warsop, Tracey Rowledge
- Analysis: What Isn’t Here Hasn’t Happened is the culmination of two years of investigation. Sarah Warsop and Tracey Rowledge gathered images, words and text to build a language for their collaboration. The words and text hint at particular actions or activities and express emotional states with themes around erasing, departing, or what might be missing. These were used to trigger a movement exploration which eventually led to a fully formed piece of choreography.
The choreography was tested and performed. It stood up for itself, but they wondered whether this was ‘it’ and questioned the potential of going a stage further to discover whether the essential qualities of the choreography could be held within another medium. Could the dance be present without the dancer? The choreography was dismantled to create groups of movement. Each group became a compositional tool with which to create the drawings.
‘Large sheets of paper covered with graphite shavings provided an indexical means to inscribe bodily movement onto a neutral ground. The resultant drawings are more chaotic than lyrical and any theatrical monumentality, which their size could imply, is tempered by monochromatic elegance. These look more like the aftermath of a skirmish defused by time, like archaeological or forensic evidence from which clues of an irretrievable act are extracted through a combination of empathy and guesswork.’
Sally O’Reilly (Catalogue Essay)
- Production Date Original: 2011
